National Nurses Week: Honouring nurses
Posted on May 10, 2021 by oshawaexpress in COMMUNITY, HEALTH
This display was created by community members in front of Lakeridge Health during the start of the pandemic as a way of supporting and saying thank you to frontline workers.
By Courtney Bachar/The Oshawa Express
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many challenges since it began in March 2020, including the impact it’s had on the healthcare system, and those frontline workers who have had to deal with the crisis day in and day out.
In honour of National Nurses Week, Colleen Wilkinson, Chief Nursing Executive for Lakeridge Health, is recognizing all the nurses and the hard work they do and have had to do, specifically throughout the pandemic.
Wairoa resident Shane Dalgliesh was a patient at the clinic and rang to make a booking last Friday for a check-up. He got through to a voicemail message, which stated the practice was no longer taking bookings. “When you walk past you can see the X-ray machine in the window, but there’s no-one there.” Dalgliesh understood there were struggles to find a dentist who would relocate to Wairoa, but he said residents faced challenges of their own. “It’s a significant cost to drive to either Napier or Gisborne – you’d basically have to take a day off work for a check-up. It’s just another obstacle we don’t need.”